This invention relates to bitumen and mineral recovery by hydraulic mining.
The recovery of minerals by hydraulic mining and jet pumping of agueous mineral slurries is well known. For example, Redford, U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,457, discloses the hydraulic method in which hot water or steam is introduced into a subterranean deposit at high velocity to dislodge bitumen and particles of sand from the surrounding mineral bed. The resulting agueous pulp is pumped to the surface by means of another high velocity jet of hot water or steam. Pfefferle, U.S. Pat. No. 3,439,953, discloses another apparatus for hydraulic mining. The U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, has sponsored development of a tool for single bore hold slurry mining in which a stream of cutting jet water is pumped at very high pressure to a point adjacent the bottom of the bore hole and is directed generally laterally at very high velocity into the surrounding mineral body to dislodge the mineral and form an agueous pulp. The agueous pulp is conveyed to the surface using a jet pump powered by a second stream of high pressure, high velocity water. Additional information on this system is available to the public from Flow Industries, Inc., 21414 68th Ave. South, Kent, Wash. 98031. A pneumatic sampling apparatus in which mineral is sampled and conveyed from below an annular bottom opening is disclosed by Murrell, U.S. Pat. No. 3,807, 541.
Two of the main problems experienced by the prior art liquid systems were obstruction of incoming slurry through clogging of the orifice screens by oversized mineral particles, and slurry input locations which did not provide for simultaneous bottom and suspended slurry recovery. Further, in both the liquid and pneumatic recovery systems, the volume of slurry recovered per unit time was not maximized because of the lack of any means to meter the flow of mined material entering the venturi throat. Thus, significant limitations were imposed upon the efficiency of recovery of the slurry volume.